Home Office Ergonomic Self-Assessment

Work from the floor up: feet, then chair, then desk height, then keyboard and mouse, then screen, then lighting. The order is not arbitrary — each step changes the correct answer for the next one, which is why fixing the monitor before the chair usually means doing it twice. Fifteen minutes, a tape measure, and nothing to buy until the end.

Before you start

Sit at your desk and work normally for two minutes, then freeze and notice where your body is. Are your shoulders up? Are your wrists bent back? Is your chin tipped down? That snapshot is your baseline, and it is more informative than any single measurement, because it captures what you actually do rather than what you do when you are paying attention.

You will need a tape measure and, ideally, someone to photograph you side-on. A side photo is the single most useful diagnostic here — almost nobody can feel their own forward head posture, and everybody can see it.

1. Feet

Target: flat on the floor, thighs roughly parallel to the ground, knees at or just below hip height.

This is first because everything above it is built on it. If your feet dangle, the front edge of the seat presses into the back of your thighs and restricts circulation; if your knees are higher than your hips, your pelvis rolls back and takes your lumbar curve with it.

If it fails: lower the chair. If lowering the chair puts the desk above your elbows, you have a desk-height problem instead and the answer is a footrest for now — see footrests — and an adjustable desk later.

2. Chair

Target: two to three fingers between the front edge of the seat and the back of your knee; the backrest's lumbar curve in the small of your back; armrests set so your shoulders drop and your forearms are level.

Seat depth is the most-missed adjustment. Too deep and you slide forward to bend your knees, which removes you from the backrest entirely and makes the lumbar support decorative.

If it fails: a lumbar cushion is the cheap retrofit for a chair with no adjustment — lumbar support. If the arms are fixed at the wrong height and cannot move, lowering them out of the way is better than shrugging over them. The full fitting logic is in chairs for long hours.

3. Desk height

Target: the working surface at your seated elbow height, so your forearms are level and your wrists straight.

Measure from the floor to the underside of your forearm with your elbows at 90 degrees and your shoulders relaxed. Compare it to your desk. Most people find a gap of two to five inches, with the desk too high — the standard 29 to 30 inch convention suits a minority of adults.

If it fails: the options are a keyboard tray under the existing desk, a sit-stand desk that lowers, or raising the chair and adding a footrest. Do not solve it by raising your shoulders, which is the default and the reason people ache across the top of the back. Your standing number is in the height calculator.

4. Keyboard and mouse

Target: keyboard directly in front of you, wrists straight and floating rather than anchored, mouse immediately beside the keyboard at the same height.

Check three things. Is the keyboard centered on your body, or on the desk? Those are different if you have a number pad. Are the keyboard's little feet up? Almost everybody has them up and they tilt the keyboard toward you, which extends your wrists — put them down. And how far away is the mouse? Every inch it sits further out is shoulder abduction held for hours.

If it fails: a tenkeyless keyboard brings the mouse three to four inches closer, which is the highest-value cheap change for shoulder and elbow discomfort. If the wrist is the complaint, the mouse guide works through which pain points to which fix.

5. Screen

Target: top of the display at or just below eye level, about an arm's length away, tilted back five to ten degrees.

Lower if you wear progressive lenses, or you will tip your head back to find the reading zone. With two screens, center the primary one on your body rather than centering the pair — unless you genuinely use both equally, in which case the seam goes in front of you. That is covered in dual monitor ergonomics.

If it fails: books work today; a monitor arm works properly and frees the desk surface. If you are on a laptop, this step is impossible without separating the screen from the keyboard — a stand plus an external keyboard, together, never a stand alone.

6. Lighting and glare

Target: no window or bright light directly behind or in front of the screen; no reflections on the display.

Sit at the desk and look at a black screen. Anything you can see reflected in it is glare you have been squinting past all day, and squinting is a forward-head-posture generator. The American Optometric Association's material on computer vision syndrome covers the eye side; the neck side is the same problem.

If it fails: turn the desk 90 degrees so the window is to your side rather than behind or in front of you. This is free and it is the fix people are least likely to try.

7. Movement

Target: a position change at least every 30 to 45 minutes.

The last item is the one that matters most, and it is not a measurement. A perfectly set workstation held motionless for eight hours is still sustained static loading, which is what NIOSH and OSHA identify as the underlying risk factor. Everything above reduces the load per hour; only this reduces the hours.

If it fails: the practical fixes are a sit-stand desk with presets so switching is one tap, a movement break tied to the switch — the two-minute sequence — and a ratio you can actually keep, from how long to stand.

Score it honestly

Seven checks. Count how many you passed. Six or seven and your workstation is not your problem — look at hours and movement instead. Four or five and you have one or two specific fixes, probably screen height and desk height. Three or fewer, start at the bottom of the list and work up, one step at a time, giving each a few days before judging it.

Re-run this after any significant change — a new chair, a new desk, a new monitor — because each one shifts the answer for the steps that follow it. And if you have persistent pain that does not respond to a correctly set workstation, that is a clinician's question rather than a furniture one.